Biography review: ‘The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur,’ by Mark Perry

In recent years, the reputation of Douglas MacArthur, arguably America’s most famous field commander, has suffered, particularly at the hands of Eisenhower biographer Jean Edward Smith and Korean conflict chronicler David Halberstam, among others.

Depicted as both insane and inept, the general did little in his public life to dispel the notion that he was, as his ex-wife, Louise Brooks, characterized him, “narrow-minded, opinionated, vain, egotistical and dismissive of civilian authority.”

Other charges that he was murderously inept as a military commander and a traitorously insubordinate warmonger are, Mark Perry asserts, patently false.

The title of his new biography comes from an offhand remark Franklin D. Roosevelt made to Rexford Tugwell that MacArthur was “the most dangerous man in America.” Perry sets out to demonstrate how FDR “tamed and used” the general as the principal tool that would defeat the Japanese. Perry accomplishes this efficiently through an entertaining narrative that will satisfy MacArthur’s defenders, even if it fails to allay the notion that he was a vainglorious martinet who never could quite separate himself from his inflated ego.

Leaping to MacArthur’s defense with the zeal of a first-time public defender assigned to a felonious delinquent, Perry wisely stops short of revealing MacArthur’s role in the Korean debacle and deals only with his career in the Philippines and the Pacific war. He depicts MacArthur as a man more sinned against than sinning.

Perry’s notion is that the problem was not that MacArthur was dangerous, but rather that he was misunderstood, a victim of circumstance. His priorities were not always in concert with the powers that controlled him, and he chafed under the restrictions forced on him by practical reality and the limits of mortal ability.

Although sometimes argumentative and off-point, Perry makes an excellent case. He notes that MacArthur’s military career was nothing short of remarkable, his rise to rank and prominence in the army in most ways unprecedented and entirely earned.

That a man who came so far so fast and as the result of ability, initiative, battlefield bravery and patriotic conviction might also harbor damning political and personal prejudices is notwithstanding. That he also sought to promote himself, perhaps far beyond what was acceptable for a military commander, and to enrich himself, perhaps far more than propriety allowed, seems excusable in the light of his military genius.

This is all debatable. Perry’s case, though outwardly convincing, lacks the substantive documentation that other historians have brought to bear on MacArthur’s history. Anecdotal displays of brilliance and the blaming of upstart subordinates do not completely offset the thousands of American lives that were sacrificed in satisfying MacArthur’s single-minded determination to return to the Philippines or in the storming of islands that were of questionable strategic value.

Perry attempts to focus on the political infighting that dominated the war in the Pacific, particularly between MacArthur and Chester Nimitz, commander of naval forces. In spite of himself, he drifts too often into specific military history. Accounts of personal and private conversations are marked by an excess of creative license, as he details intimate gestures and minute particulars that certainly would not have been recorded. And he fails to provide exact sources for many facts that need specific reference.

Although a better edit would have cleaned up a good many embarrassing stylistic problems such as an annoying overuse of trite phrasing and imprecise wording, and more and better maps would have helped clarify much of the combat history, the book reads easily.

Noting that MacArthur’s national popularity was second only to Eisenhower’s throughout the war and even afterward, he also points out that MacArthur’s missteps and personal flaws too often overshadow his genius and leave in doubt what kind of reputation his memory should enjoy.

Clay Reynolds was named runner-up in the 2014 Short Fiction Spur Award for the Western Writers of America. He is a professor of Arts & Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas.

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